Looks like Dimensity 900 is in the same ballpark performance-wise as Snapdragon 845 in my now 7-year-old OnePlus 6, which runs Mobile NixOS with a (patched) mainline kernel, no Hallium trickery. While having another Linux-first phone is nice and I’m sure the experience would be better (like you wouldn’t need to flash an old OxygenOS just for GPS to work), I’d be expecting more for $550.
Holy crap! A NixOS-on-phone user in the wild! You are rocking my dream setup. How’s your experience been with it? Is it remotely daily drivable for phone things?
Eh, kind of? I’ve been using it as a phone on-and-off for a while now, the most annoying things are the awful call audio setup (I don’t think it’s even possible to call via bluetooth headphones), no wake-on-call (which sucks for a phone), lack of a good map app (I miss OsmAnd so badly), meh battery life, and other small paper cuts here and there like semi-broken push notifications and buggy GPS.
I’m avoiding all the anbox/waydroid faffing around for now, in hopes that I will be able to run OsmAnd through android-translation-layer at some point.
Thanks for sharing! Sounds about as good/bad as I was expecting. How’s the browser experience?
Also, are there any features/tweaks you are aware of that you could not get through Nix, that the more “commercial” Linux device manufacturers have developed for their devices?
It’s pretty good TBH, I don’t miss much from Android on this front in terms of functionality.
I’m using KDE’s Angelfish (which is webkit-based), since I couldn’t find anything firefox-based with a good mobile-friendly UI. It has adblocking, page translation and forced dark mode, which is enough for me to get by. There are also some neat features like PWA support (which I use for my public transit app), and I don’t remember the other ones right now but they’re there.
Also, are there any features/tweaks you are aware of that you could not get through Nix, that the more “commercial” Linux device manufacturers have developed for their devices?
That I don’t know. Maybe some of the paper cuts could be solved on other platforms, but AFAIK 3/4 main gripes (call audio, map app, battery life) are issues on every Linux phone.
Looks like Dimensity 900 is in the same ballpark performance-wise as Snapdragon 845 in my now 7-year-old OnePlus 6, which runs Mobile NixOS with a (patched) mainline kernel, no Hallium trickery. While having another Linux-first phone is nice and I’m sure the experience would be better (like you wouldn’t need to flash an old OxygenOS just for GPS to work), I’d be expecting more for $550.
Holy crap! A NixOS-on-phone user in the wild! You are rocking my dream setup. How’s your experience been with it? Is it remotely daily drivable for phone things?
Eh, kind of? I’ve been using it as a phone on-and-off for a while now, the most annoying things are the awful call audio setup (I don’t think it’s even possible to call via bluetooth headphones), no wake-on-call (which sucks for a phone), lack of a good map app (I miss OsmAnd so badly), meh battery life, and other small paper cuts here and there like semi-broken push notifications and buggy GPS.
I’m avoiding all the anbox/waydroid faffing around for now, in hopes that I will be able to run OsmAnd through android-translation-layer at some point.
Thanks for sharing! Sounds about as good/bad as I was expecting. How’s the browser experience? Also, are there any features/tweaks you are aware of that you could not get through Nix, that the more “commercial” Linux device manufacturers have developed for their devices?
It’s pretty good TBH, I don’t miss much from Android on this front in terms of functionality.
I’m using KDE’s Angelfish (which is webkit-based), since I couldn’t find anything firefox-based with a good mobile-friendly UI. It has adblocking, page translation and forced dark mode, which is enough for me to get by. There are also some neat features like PWA support (which I use for my public transit app), and I don’t remember the other ones right now but they’re there.
That I don’t know. Maybe some of the paper cuts could be solved on other platforms, but AFAIK 3/4 main gripes (call audio, map app, battery life) are issues on every Linux phone.